Heres a suggestion for slightly ruthless characters: Kill the Living Oak tree in the top right corner of the last map. Each of my characters got 1,760,000 XP and went from levels 16 to 24+. Was this a bug? He seemed pretty easy, even the sphinx was harder at only 150,000 XP

Somehow I could never bring myself to kill the living tree. Heck, I even let Raskallion live though there was a quest to do him in. Sort of a pity when you can get so many experience points for killing the "good guys" and nothing near that for the baddies.

I agree.....I went ahead and killed both the dragon and Raskalion for the expererience points and assasin's dagger. I didn't want to kill either of them, but that seems to be the only way to get way ahead in this game! I tried to do in the tree, but he didn't even drop a leaf before decimating my party.
There's absolutely no motive for being "good" in this game, and rich rewards for being ruthless.

Well, we can at least extract one nugget of comfort for walking the high road; we did the right thing Plus, it does make the game more of a challenge, (with the monsters on hard of course) you have to admit that; I haven't used any gold cheats, not even the infamous Inn gold cheat. Nor am I reloading upon a level-up.. it really stinks having a 5th level fighter with 29 hit points, but it does make for a very tangible feeling of progress when you finally do overcome the odds (a large part of the odds being the horrible HP level-up roll system, hehe)